Northern Gateway’s communications department fought back last weekend after a poll released earlier in the week by environmental groups found a majority of British Columbians oppose Enbridge’s pipeline project.

In a video released to The Sun on Saturday and later posted to YouTube, the company claimed a pair of questions in the poll, conducted by Justason Market Intelligence for the Dogwood Initiative, ForestEthics Advocacy, Friends of Wild Salmon and West Coast Environmental Law, misled respondents with “activist misinformation,” a charge both the independent polling firm and environmental groups refuted.

Northern Gateway, which presented edited versions of the pollster’s content, took issue with two statements in the poll, one which read, “Up until now, crude oil supertankers have not entered B.C.’s inside passage because of concerns about oil spills. The federal government is now considering allowing crude oil supertankers in these waters.”

In the video, the company argues that ships would not use the Inside Passage, but rather cross through it.

“We committed during the JRP process not to use the Grenville Channel and Laredo Sound, the Inside Passage. This commitment was made to the same activists who commissioned this poll,” the video states.

Will Horter, the executive director of Dogwood Initiative, said the video was a “hatchet job.”

“It’s the act of a desperate company trying to push an unwanted project on an unwilling province,” he told The Sun.

Horter referred to the company’s own map, and showed that tankers would indeed need to travel through the Inside Passage in order to fill their hulls with oil and ship it to foreign markets.

“There’s no way that they can’t and it’s just a question of how long in these waters,” he said.

Horter said the pollster’s results were consistent with previous polls that had asked residents about pipelines and oil tankers traversing the northern inside coastal waters.

“We’re hopeful the government will do the right thing — that they’ll actually listen to British Columbians,” he said.

Later in the Northern Gateway video, the sentence, “Some people say our governments are best able to make informed decisions about proposals like Enbridge’s pipelines and tanker proposal without involving the public,” appears under a banner that reads “misleading statement.”

The video continues with Northern Gateway protesting that the joint review process was the “most exhaustive and thorough pipeline review project in Canadian history.”

But in the actual poll, that sentence was followed with two more that read: “Others say that the public should participate in decision making processes like this. Which is closer to your view?”

Barb Justason, the principal researcher at the polling firm, defended the integrity of the poll in a statement posted to the company’s website Sunday, and called the video an attempt to distract discussion.

“(They) themselves mislead the viewer by sharing half of the argument and none of the question,” read the statement. “In the process they seek to discredit my firm’s work and damage our reputation.”

Justason told The Sun Monday that as an independent pollster she has worked for the oil and gas industry, environmental groups, unpopular developers, and popular retailers, among others.

“When they take on a pollster like this, they’re really saying we don’t want to hear from the public. We’re discrediting public opinion,” she said. “They’re discrediting me, but they’re also discrediting the public feedback process. Pollsters are part of democracy. Whoever hires me it doesn’t really matter.”

Justason added that she included a question at the end of the poll which asked, “Who sponsored this research?” More than 50 per cent of respondents guessed that it was sponsored by a neutral organization or one that was in favour of the proposal. Just 16 per cent guessed that it was sponsored by an organization against the proposal.

Northern Gateway is awaiting approval on the $6.5-billion pipeline project, which will carry diluted bitumen from the Alberta oilsands to Kitimat for transport by tanker overseas to open up Asian markets. Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government has until the middle of this year to make a decision.

The poll, released Thursday, found that nearly two thirds of British Columbians are opposed to the pipeline and the tankers it will bring to the coast.

The unedited questions and results of the poll can be found on the Justason Market Intelligence website.

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Northern Gateway video attacks poll that found a majority of people in B.C. oppose pipeline

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